It is my understanding that calculating astronomical events within the solar system is easier than predicting the weather on earth. Even though it may appear to some that calculating how events millions of miles away unfold ought to be more difficult than those nearby, astronomical events such as a solar eclipse actually involves fewer variables than a weather pattern. Similarly, the AI's ability to understand games may be because games have more limited sets of rules, while real life involves far more calculations and possibilities.
Along those lines, how about for any communications system that the FBI should propose, they have to implement it onto themselves and their own communications systems/email/cell phones first, for 5 years. And they have to give the "magic key" or whatever they want to call their encryption backdoor, to some public figure who will constantly audit them. If the FBI balks at their own proposal, then we can reasonably assume that it won't work.
"The FBI clearly states right there in the FISA application that they believe Steele was hired to find dirt on Trump
This was not a contention of the Nunes Memo. The problem was that the FBI knew that the Steele dossier was paid for by Hillary Clinton and the DNC, and the FBI knew about it, yet hid those facts from the FISA court, a major ethical breakdown to say the least.
I was hoping that the article would contain some actual material properties, such as yield strength, ultimate tensile strength, and possibly elongation. Then we could start making some meaningful comparisons against steel.
Similar to muting sound from a tab, there ought to be a button to cutoff the tab from consuming any more bandwidth. This would shut down unwanted videos, gifs, advertisements, and other undesirable content from loading.
I have to wonder what the energy cost is to achieve this? I find it difficult to believe that the energy cost would be efficient for large sized objects, but perhaps it will find niche uses for manipulating small (and lightweight) ones.
Yes you can. Simply find an owner, and come up with an agreement where they will give you some bitcoin now, and then you will give it back to them at some point in the future. (Naked shorting may face certain complications, however.)
Gold can be confiscated by the government as it crosses a boarder. Also, transferring $5mil in gold might be much more expensive due to security concerns, not to mention time-consuming depending on the distance. Bitcoin isn't perfect, but it does have a several advantages.
It seems to me that private company launches are more important than ever. Once they're funded, the petty politics can't shut down or delay a launch. Space exploration could move on without D.C.
It explains that the United States is FINALLY starting to see an uptick in employment, with some labor shortages, which is key to ordinary Americans seeing an increase in their paycheck. Due to the economic outlook of further expected growth, companies that retain employees stand to grow; companies that don't retain their employees during a labor shortage will likely go out of business. So you're correct to be skeptical about generosity, but it IS an attempt to foster goodwill with their existing employees out of corporate self-interest.
The gold standard has a problem in that money is, at its core, a record-keeping system for un-returned favors. By backing a unit of money with a particular unit of gold (or any other commodity) then you limit the maximum size of the amount of un-returned favors that you can track. If an economy that uses this commodity-backed currency generates more work, or more products than this maximum size, then there will be a currency shortage, thereby preventing some transactions. BTC arguably is a hybrid system that is not limited by a commodity, yet is still protected like gold from the introduction of arbitrary amounts of currency from potentially un-deserving sources (banks, government, counterfeiters).
I'm not saying that a hybrid system such as BTC is superior (although it may be, especially if you don't trust the government or its deficit spending), just that there was a somewhat legitimate reason for switching from a gold standard to fiat money (commodity limitation), and that BTC doesn't just replicate a commodity-backed money system.
While it may be true that bitcoin has no inherent value, the underlying bitcoin mining network does generate value as it processes transactions securely, and maintains a record keeping ledger (blockchain).
Furthermore, it also has an inherent cost to produce (electricity) which prevents the arbitrary addition of currency into the system (banker loans, government printing, counterfeiter printing), which then is then a very valuable feature for those who desire a currency as a long term store of wealth.
Some differences between crytpocurrencies and tulips include: 1.) unable to simply grow unlimited crypto tokens for a small fraction of the current price, and 2.) tulips don't actually perform useful functions such as preventing counterfeiting, or allowing an un-inspectable and un-confiscatable international currency transfer. While it is possible that cryptocurrencies are in a bubble, and perhaps some may fail, the desire for a non-debase-able currency where people control their money instead of a government/banker is not simply a fad that will go away.
Under felony murder laws, you can be charged with murder if you engage felony activity that is inherently dangerous, such as phoning in a hoax hostage situation, even if you're not the one who directly caused the death. Simply causing a dangerous situation is enough to make you responsible.
And it is my understanding that in Kansas, phoning in a hostage hoax is considered a felony. The police officer(s) involved in the fatality will legally be able to pin the blame on the caller, and the caller will face murder charges.
No way inferior? Try buying anything with it without jumping through a bunch of hoops, and losing some of it due to transaction fees and value fluctuations.
I should have phrased that much differently as "criticizing Bitcoin because of certain drawbacks, when the government-sanctioned fiat currency of your choosing has those exact same drawbacks, is not much of an argument". You are correct that Bitcoin does indeed have its drawbacks, such as transaction speed and exchange cost. Although it has other advantages, such as near weightless and volume-less compared to pieces of paper, or precious metals, among many others. Intrinsic value of Bitcoin, however, is in no way inferior to fiat money.
You're wrong. The dollar has legal standing as recognized tender for all debts public or private.
It seems we disagree about the definition of "real value". The original concept of money is that there were bank vaults, whereby people would deposit valuables such as gold, in return for documentation that they owned some of the stuff in the vault. Rather than go back to the vault, get the gold, and use the gold to pay for a transaction, eventually some bank notes became trustworthy enough such that people simply exchanged for the bank notes, and seldom went to the bank to cash out the gold. It used to be this way in the United States: if you felt that you were not getting a fair value for your dollar, then you could exchange dollars for gold. Since 1971, the dollar is backed by nothing, and there is no real value. You are not guaranteed to get ANYTHING of value for your dollar, by anyone, including the government itself.
legal standing as recognized tender for all debts public or private.
Transactions that don't involve dollars can easily be written into a contract. Noone is required to accept payment in dollars for a contracted trade, much less agree that any item that you want must be exchanged for a certain amount of dollars.
You pay someone in bitcoin and they can take it and say you paid them in Monopoly money and they want cash now.
And you have no legal recourse except give the shit back or pay again.
This is fraud, a very anti-social behavior. There are escrow agents that can fix this problem, not to mention evidence of a contract to be conducted in Bitcoins, plus an examination of the blockchain could to prove that the transfer occurred as agreed. You would VERY MUCH have legal recourse against someone who demands a fraudulent double payment as you describe.
(Yes, I know, gold is used for industrial purposes. However, this does not explain why we must pay $1300 for an ounce of gold that takes about $500 to mine, while mining 10 times the amount we need, and already having stockpiled years worth of production)
You have identified a potential money making opportunity, if you are correct. Of course, I suspect that you are not correct, and would discover that mining gold is much more difficult to mine than what you believe. But, you are free to try.
Still, the most direct answer to your question is to show you an infographic on just how little gold actually exists in the world: http://demonocracy.info/infogr...
Bitcoin has the same real value as U.S. Dollars: none! The dollar is no longer guaranteed by anything, not gold, nor silver, nor land, nor oil reserves, or anything else. Thus, we need to judge its value on other criteria, not real value. Things such as trust, or scarcity. If the value or your currency lost 98% of its value, would it still be scarce? If you don't trust the people in charge of the currency, why should they be in charge of the currency?
It's the ultimate "fiat currency", created by wasting enormous amounts of electricity to produce absolutely nothing of any value in the physical world.
Electricity consumption ensures that it cannot be created without cost, thereby preventing anyone from artificially increasing the supply. Those who own a currency prefer this. Those who do not own a currency, and would like to AWARD themselves the currency through some unearned mechanism dislike this feature of bitcoin.
It's digital fucking tulips - something that has little or no actual value, but an over-inflating price just because people think they can buy it at any price and sell it on for more...
You are perhaps correct, in that any scarce item can be accepted by a society as a medium of exchange, and then if the acceptance shifts elsewhere, then the previously accepted item will lose its value. However, this argument can also be said about dollars, and most other government-backed currencies. In fact, all fiat currencies throughout history have eventually failed. Once again, bitcoin is in no way inferior other currencies, and you must look to other measures to determine its worth. The concept that bitcoin seems impossible to debase makes it considerably desirable.
If I were the FBI, I'd keep the actual cell phone of a suspect, but give them back an identical looking cell phone. It wouldn't have their original data on it, but instead a key logger, which would keylog the password once the phone is booted up and then send it on to FBI HQ.
Along similar lines, I wonder how many of those devices will have any actual evidence of wrongdoing? If we recall, the FBI desperately wanted to backdoor the cell phone of the San Bernadino terrorists, which they eventually did, but found no information of value. Just because the FBI says "6900 devices" doesn't really mean anything to me. Peoples' privacy deserves protection more than the FBI needs to backdoor everyone's cell phone just so that they can score the occasional long-shot conviction.
I live in an older home built in the 1950s. It has a box on the side of the attached garage that can be opened from the outside or the inside; it was designed for the milkman delivery. If homes could be designed with a larger compartment, enough to contain a refrigerator, then this could work fine.
Slashdot Mirror
It is my understanding that calculating astronomical events within the solar system is easier than predicting the weather on earth. Even though it may appear to some that calculating how events millions of miles away unfold ought to be more difficult than those nearby, astronomical events such as a solar eclipse actually involves fewer variables than a weather pattern. Similarly, the AI's ability to understand games may be because games have more limited sets of rules, while real life involves far more calculations and possibilities.
Along those lines, how about for any communications system that the FBI should propose, they have to implement it onto themselves and their own communications systems/email/cell phones first, for 5 years. And they have to give the "magic key" or whatever they want to call their encryption backdoor, to some public figure who will constantly audit them. If the FBI balks at their own proposal, then we can reasonably assume that it won't work.
"The FBI clearly states right there in the FISA application that they believe Steele was hired to find dirt on Trump
This was not a contention of the Nunes Memo. The problem was that the FBI knew that the Steele dossier was paid for by Hillary Clinton and the DNC, and the FBI knew about it, yet hid those facts from the FISA court, a major ethical breakdown to say the least.
I was hoping that the article would contain some actual material properties, such as yield strength, ultimate tensile strength, and possibly elongation. Then we could start making some meaningful comparisons against steel.
Similar to muting sound from a tab, there ought to be a button to cutoff the tab from consuming any more bandwidth. This would shut down unwanted videos, gifs, advertisements, and other undesirable content from loading.
I have to wonder what the energy cost is to achieve this? I find it difficult to believe that the energy cost would be efficient for large sized objects, but perhaps it will find niche uses for manipulating small (and lightweight) ones.
Because governments have successfully regulated stuff like marijuana and cocaine, and now their value is zero, right?
Yes you can. Simply find an owner, and come up with an agreement where they will give you some bitcoin now, and then you will give it back to them at some point in the future. (Naked shorting may face certain complications, however.)
Gold can be confiscated by the government as it crosses a boarder. Also, transferring $5mil in gold might be much more expensive due to security concerns, not to mention time-consuming depending on the distance. Bitcoin isn't perfect, but it does have a several advantages.
It seems to me that private company launches are more important than ever. Once they're funded, the petty politics can't shut down or delay a launch. Space exploration could move on without D.C.
While I'm not a corporate finance expert, some explanation can be found here in the latest Federal Reserve Beige Book report:
https://www.federalreserve.gov...
It explains that the United States is FINALLY starting to see an uptick in employment, with some labor shortages, which is key to ordinary Americans seeing an increase in their paycheck. Due to the economic outlook of further expected growth, companies that retain employees stand to grow; companies that don't retain their employees during a labor shortage will likely go out of business. So you're correct to be skeptical about generosity, but it IS an attempt to foster goodwill with their existing employees out of corporate self-interest.
The gold standard has a problem in that money is, at its core, a record-keeping system for un-returned favors. By backing a unit of money with a particular unit of gold (or any other commodity) then you limit the maximum size of the amount of un-returned favors that you can track. If an economy that uses this commodity-backed currency generates more work, or more products than this maximum size, then there will be a currency shortage, thereby preventing some transactions. BTC arguably is a hybrid system that is not limited by a commodity, yet is still protected like gold from the introduction of arbitrary amounts of currency from potentially un-deserving sources (banks, government, counterfeiters).
I'm not saying that a hybrid system such as BTC is superior (although it may be, especially if you don't trust the government or its deficit spending), just that there was a somewhat legitimate reason for switching from a gold standard to fiat money (commodity limitation), and that BTC doesn't just replicate a commodity-backed money system.
While it may be true that bitcoin has no inherent value, the underlying bitcoin mining network does generate value as it processes transactions securely, and maintains a record keeping ledger (blockchain).
Furthermore, it also has an inherent cost to produce (electricity) which prevents the arbitrary addition of currency into the system (banker loans, government printing, counterfeiter printing), which then is then a very valuable feature for those who desire a currency as a long term store of wealth.
Some differences between crytpocurrencies and tulips include: 1.) unable to simply grow unlimited crypto tokens for a small fraction of the current price, and 2.) tulips don't actually perform useful functions such as preventing counterfeiting, or allowing an un-inspectable and un-confiscatable international currency transfer. While it is possible that cryptocurrencies are in a bubble, and perhaps some may fail, the desire for a non-debase-able currency where people control their money instead of a government/banker is not simply a fad that will go away.
Under felony murder laws, you can be charged with murder if you engage felony activity that is inherently dangerous, such as phoning in a hoax hostage situation, even if you're not the one who directly caused the death. Simply causing a dangerous situation is enough to make you responsible.
https://www.justia.com/crimina...
And it is my understanding that in Kansas, phoning in a hostage hoax is considered a felony. The police officer(s) involved in the fatality will legally be able to pin the blame on the caller, and the caller will face murder charges.
No way inferior? Try buying anything with it without jumping through a bunch of hoops, and losing some of it due to transaction fees and value fluctuations.
I should have phrased that much differently as "criticizing Bitcoin because of certain drawbacks, when the government-sanctioned fiat currency of your choosing has those exact same drawbacks, is not much of an argument". You are correct that Bitcoin does indeed have its drawbacks, such as transaction speed and exchange cost. Although it has other advantages, such as near weightless and volume-less compared to pieces of paper, or precious metals, among many others. Intrinsic value of Bitcoin, however, is in no way inferior to fiat money.
You're wrong. The dollar has legal standing as recognized tender for all debts public or private.
It seems we disagree about the definition of "real value". The original concept of money is that there were bank vaults, whereby people would deposit valuables such as gold, in return for documentation that they owned some of the stuff in the vault. Rather than go back to the vault, get the gold, and use the gold to pay for a transaction, eventually some bank notes became trustworthy enough such that people simply exchanged for the bank notes, and seldom went to the bank to cash out the gold. It used to be this way in the United States: if you felt that you were not getting a fair value for your dollar, then you could exchange dollars for gold. Since 1971, the dollar is backed by nothing, and there is no real value. You are not guaranteed to get ANYTHING of value for your dollar, by anyone, including the government itself.
legal standing as recognized tender for all debts public or private.
Transactions that don't involve dollars can easily be written into a contract. Noone is required to accept payment in dollars for a contracted trade, much less agree that any item that you want must be exchanged for a certain amount of dollars.
You pay someone in bitcoin and they can take it and say you paid them in Monopoly money and they want cash now. And you have no legal recourse except give the shit back or pay again.
This is fraud, a very anti-social behavior. There are escrow agents that can fix this problem, not to mention evidence of a contract to be conducted in Bitcoins, plus an examination of the blockchain could to prove that the transfer occurred as agreed. You would VERY MUCH have legal recourse against someone who demands a fraudulent double payment as you describe.
I bet the author would have felt otherwise about bitcoin's "socially useful function" if he lived in a repressive country like Zimbabwe or Venezuela!
(Yes, I know, gold is used for industrial purposes. However, this does not explain why we must pay $1300 for an ounce of gold that takes about $500 to mine, while mining 10 times the amount we need, and already having stockpiled years worth of production)
You have identified a potential money making opportunity, if you are correct. Of course, I suspect that you are not correct, and would discover that mining gold is much more difficult to mine than what you believe. But, you are free to try.
Still, the most direct answer to your question is to show you an infographic on just how little gold actually exists in the world:
http://demonocracy.info/infogr...
and what real value do you think bitcoin has?
Bitcoin has the same real value as U.S. Dollars: none! The dollar is no longer guaranteed by anything, not gold, nor silver, nor land, nor oil reserves, or anything else. Thus, we need to judge its value on other criteria, not real value. Things such as trust, or scarcity. If the value or your currency lost 98% of its value, would it still be scarce? If you don't trust the people in charge of the currency, why should they be in charge of the currency?
It's the ultimate "fiat currency", created by wasting enormous amounts of electricity to produce absolutely nothing of any value in the physical world.
Electricity consumption ensures that it cannot be created without cost, thereby preventing anyone from artificially increasing the supply. Those who own a currency prefer this. Those who do not own a currency, and would like to AWARD themselves the currency through some unearned mechanism dislike this feature of bitcoin.
It's digital fucking tulips - something that has little or no actual value, but an over-inflating price just because people think they can buy it at any price and sell it on for more...
You are perhaps correct, in that any scarce item can be accepted by a society as a medium of exchange, and then if the acceptance shifts elsewhere, then the previously accepted item will lose its value. However, this argument can also be said about dollars, and most other government-backed currencies. In fact, all fiat currencies throughout history have eventually failed. Once again, bitcoin is in no way inferior other currencies, and you must look to other measures to determine its worth. The concept that bitcoin seems impossible to debase makes it considerably desirable.
If I were the FBI, I'd keep the actual cell phone of a suspect, but give them back an identical looking cell phone. It wouldn't have their original data on it, but instead a key logger, which would keylog the password once the phone is booted up and then send it on to FBI HQ.
Along similar lines, I wonder how many of those devices will have any actual evidence of wrongdoing? If we recall, the FBI desperately wanted to backdoor the cell phone of the San Bernadino terrorists, which they eventually did, but found no information of value. Just because the FBI says "6900 devices" doesn't really mean anything to me. Peoples' privacy deserves protection more than the FBI needs to backdoor everyone's cell phone just so that they can score the occasional long-shot conviction.
I wonder how the FBI scored prosecutions before mobile devices were invented? I guess they must not have solved any crimes at all?
I live in an older home built in the 1950s. It has a box on the side of the attached garage that can be opened from the outside or the inside; it was designed for the milkman delivery. If homes could be designed with a larger compartment, enough to contain a refrigerator, then this could work fine.
I don't want to play second fiddle to this conversation.